Category: Meadmaking

So over the weekend I had some time to indulge in some prime foodiness, among the highest orders of such that I am capable.

Chaga Spruce Mead

I began on Friday night, when I went to the spring to gather some water. While I was there, I saw thousands of fireflies in the field across from the spring — by far the most I’d ever seen in Maine. That place always feels magical to me when I go. Some places are just like that…. Glastonbury Tor is another (I took the main photo at the top of this website when I visited there in 2005). When I returned home with with a lot of gorgeous spring water, I put on 3 gallons of chaga tea. This requires a slow simmer for about 12 hours, and produces a wonderfully rich tea that looks like coffee.

Chaga Spruce Tea

At the very end of the simmer, I put in some freshly-harvested spruce tips, let it steep for about 30 minutes, and then let it cool overnight. The next day I mixed it with honey, pitched the yeast, put it into the carboy, and now it is happily bubbling away.

I have had more people tell me that my spruce mead is the best mead they’ve ever had than any other brew I’ve done. It’s not my personal favorite, but there is no question it has a magic to it that is palpable. Perhaps it is because much of the flavor comes from my own immediate ecosystem, namely the spruce trees in my yard.

Rocking the Ribs

It’s funny. I spent nearly 20 years as a vegetarian, many of those as a vegan, and some as a raw vegan. These days I’m more about eating the best quality local food I can. Since I’m cooking meat again these days, I finally got a Weber kettle charcoal grill last year and have been learning how to use it well. I finally feel like I’m starting to achieve some mastery with it.

Weber grill set up for indirect heating, with charcoal only on one side separated by bricks. Ribs on indirect, with sauce directly over the fire to simmer.

I haven’t made ribs all that often, but this batch I made was really good. I’m sure I’ll make them again, regularly. I started by setting up the grill for indirect heat, basically dividing the bottom half of the grill with bricks, so that the charcoal stays on one side. This allows me to do indirect heating, treating the grill basically like an oven for cooking. For those curious about how I cooked these ribs, here’s a rundown:

First, I prepped the ribs by peeling off the membrane and applying a rub. The rub I used is DIY, is a mixture of a lot of spices (salt, pepper, garlic, chili powder, a bit of cinnamon, cumin, and who knows what else, it’s different every time). I put the rub on a couple of hours before starting the fire.

Then, I started the fire using 1 chimney of charcoal, with another half-chimney full of unlit charcoal already in the grill. When the chimney was lit I put it into the grill, put on the lid, and opened the airvents so the grill would heat up and stabilize. I restricted the airflow to get about a 300 degree fire to start with.

Almost done….

While the charcoal was starting, I made a homemade barbecue sauce in my old cast iron skillet that belonged to my grandmother. I began by sauteeing a diced onion, then added salt, pepper, garlic, molasses, cayenne-infused honey, vinegar, a handful of raisins, and enough water to fill the pan about halfway.

I then brought the rib rack and the skillet full of sauce outside. I seared the rib rack on both sides, then moved over to the indirect heat side. Then I added a chunk of dried apple wood from the tree in the yard for the flavorful smoke, put the skillet back on directly over the fire, and covered it up.

Every half hour, I opened the grill to baste the ribs, and if necessary add more water to the reducing sauce, so it wouldn’t scorch and would keep cooking down. Every other time I opened the grill, I also flipped over the rib rack.

Ribs ready to serve.

I did not use foil to cover the ribs as many do. I found that by keeping the air in the grill moist from the simmering sauce, the ribs don’t dry out.

About 3 hours in, the outside of the ribs was perfect, so I cut the rack in half and put both halves in the skillet with the sauce, and moved everything to the indirect side.

After another 30-45 minutes, it was ready, so I cut the ribs into pieces.

All in all it was one of the best grills I’ve done yet. It came out perfectly.

In other news….

Writing has slowed down a bit, but I will publish my next article over at Gods&Radicals next week. The trend of seriously awesome writing over there has continued as of late…. check it out if you haven’t.

Since the last update, Summer has arrived. It was kicked off by Beltane On The Beach, where a bunch of Maine Pagans celebrate the unofficial arrival of summer. In my own neck of the woods there is much more green; the trees have finally sprung their leaves and temperatures are higher. Wonderful.

Once again I haven’t done a great job at keeping this blog updated. My apologies. There’s been a lot going on. Since the last update, Summer has arrived. It was kicked off by Beltane On The Beach, where a bunch of Maine Pagans celebrate the unofficial arrival of summer. In my own neck of the woods there is much more green; the trees have finally sprung their leaves and temperatures are higher. Wonderful. A lot of people around me are complaining about their allergies from the pollen in the air; I have to say I don’t miss my allergies at all. I struggled with them for more than 40 years. I credit my cleaner diet and my regimen of medicinal mushrooms for the fact that they don’t bother me anymore.

Audiogeekery

Morgan has a new video up, from our recording session recently at Halo Studios. This time we set up a camera, and took a video of it. I love how talented she is, that pretty much all of her music thus far has been live in one take with no overdubs. Anyway, enjoy Thigh-High Apprehension:

Also, I have been crazy busy mixing some really cool stuff that I can’t really talk specifically about yet. More on that front as it develops.

Writing, Politics, & Paganism

I’ve been writing a lot lately, taking it much more seriously for the past half-year or so.

Most of us, of course, don’t really have enough money, at least not to live the way we wish to live. Most of us will use our limited “survival tickets” to buy food and shelter, meeting our most basic needs for survival, while in the meantime the spectre of unpaid debt keeps growing in the back of our minds, gnawing at us, creating fear that eventually men with guns will come and take away our limited survival tickets and our home. This fear keeps us willing to engage the capitalist system, so that we can struggle for more survival tickets, showing how powerful this story of debt is in our culture.

Capitalism’s ability to concretize abstractions in our minds is pure sorcery at the highest levels, such that billions of people behave as if these purely abstract and arbitrary rules of capitalist engagement are quite real and concrete, beyond question at the most fundamental level. They take the place of the gods and spirits, turning our experience of the world upside-down, seeing every aspect of the ecosystem in terms of its own rules rather than in terms of the actual physical things in the world and the labor of its people.

I also talk about whether or not Paganism can be politicized:

any Pagan with a Sense Of Place, encountering the land beneath their feet, will undoubtedly be able to discern how their Paganism is politicized, and has been for the better part of 500 years. I am lucky, I live in the Maine woods where I can walk right outside my door and be surrounded by nature without leaving “my” 2 acres of forest. These woods where I live have a spirit to them, a kind of consciousness, and my own spirit is bettered when I deepen my relationship with these woods. This is my Paganism. But I am also acutely aware that no tree on “my” property is more than a century old — pretty much the entire state of Maine has been clearcut several times in the past 300 years. When I speak to the trees of capitalism they get quiet, and their sadness is discernible to me. This, too, is my Paganism.

I feel like writing is still a struggle for me (another factor behind the radio silence on this channel). I committed myself to being more disciplined about writing starting last December, and I do feel like I’m making some progress. But it still seems like I struggle, almost agonize, over every word. I’m still waiting for the day when I can just tune in, turn on, and just have awesome writing come out on its own. Perhaps it’s a pipe dream, but when I read the amazing work of Rhyd Wildermuth, Sean Donahue, Alley Valkyrie, and others, who manage to produce writing that hits hard on the mind level as well as the heart and spirit levels, I see just how far I have to go.

Meadmaking

My meadmaking has slowed down the past year or two. This is for a variety of reasons (storage space for mead bottles, the high cost of honey, creative energy going to different places). But as I mentioned above, the spruce tips are poking their neon green nutritional goodness out, and soon it will be time to make another batch of Chaga Spruce Mead, one of the favorites that I do. Also, soon I will bottle last year’s Harvest Berry Meads. And soon I’ll be able to taste my very first bochet that I did a few months ago, can’t wait for that one.

Ever Onward

I have been quite busy lately, all with good projects. But it can be a bit overwhelming sometimes, to the point where I’m feeling like I might benefit from reprioritizing a bit. It’s difficult, because I love everything in my life at the moment. But there are only so many hours in the day.

After making the bochet last night, I had some leftover ingredients so I made up a batch of traditional mead. In honor of the full moon today, I named this one after Máni, the Norse God of the Moon. Details over at BardicBrews.net.

In addition, my lovely and talented daughter, Morgan Lindenschmidt, released a new song recently, called Wooden Overcoat. We recorded this at home in the living room, and like all her recordings thus far it was done in one take. Details on this are over at CraftedRecordings.com, and check out the song:

Collecting the best water on the planet, as a gift of the ecosystem. Despite the 3′ of snow on the ground, the water flows freely and is accessible. Photo by Morgan Lindenschmidt.

My latest post, Elemental Ethos: Water, at A Sense Of Place over on Patheos Pagan is live. It’s no secret that water is probably my favorite element in terms of the practices I employ around them. Going to the spring is one of my favorite activities, it is probably the closest thing I have to going to church, or on a short pilgrimage to holy ground.

There is lots of other exciting news a-brewing in my reality, but for now I will keep this under my vest. Yeah, I know, I’m a tease.

OK, one hint for one item: my meadmaking practice has slowed down a fair amount in the past year, year-and-a-half. But tonight I’m going to make my first bochet, which is mead made after cooking the honey to caramelize it, which darkens it and brings out the rich caramel flavors.

Turns out this batch was a bit of an ordeal, in the sense that it is very labor intensive. Also, it turns out that boiling honey splashing up onto the skin and sticking is painful. A gift for a gift. Details on Luna Bochet at BardicBrews.net.